I am slammed here at work, but I will give you a couple of nice articles on this topic. First from IBD:

The United Nations' Copenhagen Climate Conference is going fast into meltdown. It may be because it's not about climate anymore, but fitting a noose on the world's productive economies and extracting wealth transfers.

Poor countries have gone from defending their right to economic development as a reason for exemptions to emissions cuts to claiming a "legitimate" right to vast wealth transfers from the West to prevent emissions. They call it "climate justice."

Monday, the Group of 77, led by African states, shut down the conference for the second time, saying they would pick up their marbles and go home if the West didn't agree to their formula for emissions cutbacks and send them more than the $10 billion promised by the West....

Having manipulated the foreign aid racket for decades, the African officials knew just what buttons to push with Western Europeans. Not surprisingly, they won concessions. No doubt they'll do it again to get more, and the Danes and other one-worlders will give them what they want.

The idea of essentially taxing hardworking citizens of the democracies to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early '80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.

But such dreams never die. The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques....

Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green. The cultural elites went straight from the memorial service for socialism to the altar of the environment. The objective is the same: highly centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the new class of experts, managers and technocrats. This time, however, the alleged justification is not abolishing oppression and inequality but saving the planet.

Leaders of fifty African nations came to Copenhagen asking $400 billion for the next three years to "offset" carbon credit "damages" which they claim to suffer. Inexplicably, two days ago, that demand was increased to an eye-goggling 5% of GDP (gross domestic product), estimated at $722 billion from the United States alone. There never was a response from the industrialized world.

The London Guardian reports today that the disgruntled Africans may boycott the rest of the climate summit. The conference's own web page quotes the Ethiopian prime minister as saying he will "scuttle" talks unless there is discussion of "real money" and "not an illusion."

7 Comments

Me:

Even *if* Co2 emissions were provably the most dangerous environmental pollutant, how would any halfway sane human being come up with the idea of trading money for imaginary, immeasurable and or imaginary "credits" could possibly be a good idea?

If you push lots of liquidity into an emerging economy, it'll result in faster buildup and hence more emissions.

His spendthrift administration and gluttonous Congress have taught the Third World - hey, move that line over a ways - "Real Money" got bigger!

Oh, and by the way - the Africans appear to understand what inflation means - they need the 70x amount to get the same actual buying value. I wonder how long it will take Congress to make the same observation - that printing lots and lots of extra money reduces the value of their salary and bribe money, too.

Alen:

"The idea of essentially taxing hardworking citizens of the democracies to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early â€™80s). They put a stake through the enterprise." -Krauthammer

As much as I'd like to assume CK means this in the sense of wealth redistribution, this isn't correct. We pissed away tens of billions giving aid during the cold war playing "who has more myspace friends" game in Africa with the USSR. It's been awhile since I read up on this history but I don't recall Reagan cutting this aid off (putting a stake in it's heart). We still faught proxy wars with the USSR in places like the Congo, Angola, Ethiopia, Somlia, etc.

Hillary wants to toss in a TRILLION as part of the deal! What is it about the current administration and trillions.

Of course, since the press release doesn't go through congressional budget rules, this is being reported as an annual ($100 bn) figure, just to confuse the ever increasing fraction of our populace which is innumerate.